The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

The New Hotness

  • LED Floor Lamp UI Improvement

    A new floor lamp arrived with the usual dark-gray-on-black annotations on an absolutely non-tactile pair of capacitive controls. For a device intended for use in a dim room, this makes little sense, unless you’re both trendy and concerned about manufacturing costs.

    A strip of 1/4 inch Kapton tape added just enough tactility to find the damn buttons without looking at the lamp head:

    Teckin floor lamp - tactile switch tape
    Teckin floor lamp – tactile switch tape

    The pole’s non-adjustable length put the lamp head well above eye level, so I removed one pole segment. This required cutting the 12 V zipcord and crimping a pair of connectors:

    Teckin floor lamp - spliced wire
    Teckin floor lamp – spliced wire

    I briefly considered conjuring a skinny connector, but came to my senses: there’s plenty of zipcord if I must chop out the connectors, particularly seeing as how shortening the pole added a foot.

    The setscrew at the bottom of the gooseneck crunched the zipcord against the metal shell. A polypropylene snippet made me feel better, even if it makes no difference:

    Teckin floor lamp - wire clamp pad
    Teckin floor lamp – wire clamp pad

    After all that, It Just Worked™:

    Teckin floor lamp - installed
    Teckin floor lamp – installed

    Done!